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Byers Auto Group

UX Writing, UX Research, and Design

Introduction

This seven-week project focused on redesigning ByerAuto.com. Byers Auto is an auto dealership group in Ohio with multiple locations across the state. 

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With my teammate Kyrin and I leading our group of four, we set out to determine user experience problems with the ByersAuto website and how we might fix them.

From left to right: Thomas Rodriguez, Hayden Harrison (me), Jadon Lam, Kyrin Assawachawakul

Heuristic Evaluation

Our group began a heuristic evaluation of the ByersAuto website. Below are the main points of our findings:

  • The website has too much text

  • The website lacks a value statement

  • The website has too many exterior links

  • The website has broken links

  • The website is unorganized

User Surveys

To identify the target audience of the website, we created surveys that would provide us with demographic information and additional user information for the website.

 

We asked questions that focused on:

  • income

  • budget

  • location

  • education level

  • whether users had purchased a car before

  • how comfortable they were with technology

 

Our results showed that we had a wide variety of audiences with differing incomes, locations, education, and car purchasing experience. With the information gathered, we created personas to represent our audience.

Card Sort

Through card sort testing, we determined the navigation for our redesign should be as follows:

  • Vehicles

  • Specials

  • Services

  • Contact

  • About

Site map:

User Testing

Our final step before beginning the redesign process was to design and host user testing.

Each of our group members did two user tests, resulting in a total of eight participants. The tests involved a scenario and tasks for our participants to follow. As a group, we also created a pretest and posttest questionnaire.

 

Additionally, I suggested that we create a script for our test to keep consistency across the participants.

 

Our user tests helped to support our findings from our heuristic evaluations: the website was hard to navigate and there was too much text, which made the website overwhelming.

Design

With our user research complete, it was time for us to individually create design mockups for our rendition of the Byers Auto website. My redesign focused on simplifying the website as much as possible without losing important information. I found this part of the assignment most challenging, as I previously did not have any experience with Figma.

Current ByersAuto Website

My Redesign

Takeaways

  • This semester-long project was a significant part of my education on user experience processes.

  • Got out of my comfort zone and learned from a more experienced team member.

  • Learned the essentials of user research and user design thinking.

  • Learned the importance of accessibility on websites and how to correctly develop a successful architecture.

  • Practiced dealing with group discrepancies such as group members failing to complete their work on time, or fully understanding the topics at hand.

  • Practiced leading a group with positivity and inclusiveness.

  • Developed meaningful relationships – My group continues to keep in touch with each other and our career journeys.

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